30 October 2017

Singh's religiosity complicates the NDP’s Quebec quandary

The turning point in the 2015 federal
election campaign in Quebec came in mid-September, a month before voting
day, when the Federal Court of Appeal struck down a Conservative
government ban on face coverings at citizenship ceremonies. For New
Democratic Leader Tom Mulcair, it was the moment of truth that ended his
party’s long run atop the polls in the province it had swept in 2011.

The NDP had come face-to-face with its own two solitudes.

The
Quebec left is uncompromisingly secularist. While it supports freedom
of religion, it believes that visible manifestations of faith are to be
discouraged in the public sphere, lest they impinge on the separation
between church and state. Quebeckers fought hard to throw off an
oppressive Catholic Church and see any religious accommodation by the
state as a threat to the gains of the Quiet Revolution. More recently
inspired by France’s secularist approach, the Quebec left supports
strict limits on where and when religion can be practised.